Devices that consume electrical power are ubiquitous in today's society. Many of these devices rely on electrical power stored in batteries and other energy storage devices. Typically, for battery-powered devices, the batteries are charged when the device is not in use and are at least partially discharged as the device is used, thereby consuming the electrical power from the battery.
With the increasing importance of electronic devices, manufacturers are striving to make devices and batteries that run more efficiently (e.g., devices that consume less power and batteries that last longer on a single charge, generate less waste heat, etc.) and have a longer useful lifetime. In order to make more efficient batteries that have a longer lifetime, it can be important to understand various performance characteristics (e.g., heat generation, reliability, etc.) of components within a battery, such as the anode, the cathode, the electrolyte, or other components.
Calorimeters provide one way of measuring the heat energy created or consumed by a sample. Various types of calorimeters exist, such as adiabatic calorimeters, reaction calorimeters, bomb calorimeters, differential scanning calorimeters, and others. For instance, heat flux differential scanning calorimeters measure the temperature difference between a sample pan and a reference pan. Using calibration curves, the temperature difference between the sample and the reference pans allows for the heat flux to the sample under test to be calculated.